Zuckerberg, Obama, and Apple tell kids to try programming for an hour

Code.org and the White House push for broad understanding of computer science.

Code.org’s Hour of Code initiative, which kicks off this week, has received endorsements from no less than President Obama, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Hour of Code seeks to motivate students at 33,000 schools to give programming a try by using tutorials on the site or by attending sessions at locations like Apple or Microsoft retail stores.

Hour of Code is part of Computer Science Education Week (CSEW), which started in 2009 and begins this Monday. The hour of coding isn’t meant to be at any particular time; it's simply a block of time for encouraging children to engage with programming at some point during the week.

The new nonprofit Code.org took up the cause of CSEW this year, getting the cooperation of corporate partners including Yahoo, Google, MSN, and Disney, which will all promote Hour of Code on their home pages, per AllThingsD. Code.org claims that five million students have committed to participate globally, and it provides a guide for teachers to lead an hour of coding in their classrooms.

To celebrate the week, Apple is hosting a free workshop at its retail stores December 11, and Microsoft’s retail stores will hold similar workshops throughout the week.

Promoted Comments

It was so easy to start programming in the 1980s. Every home computer had basic built in and it was easy to draw simple shapes on the screen. Kids did it all the time even though their parents were clueless.

Now there is once again a huge wall around programming and there has to be someone around to help lift kids over the wall and show them how to get their feet wet. But there aren't that many somebodies, so most kids will never get a chance. It's a shame.

It has been suggested the Zuck and Gates are only doing this because they don't like the fact that programmers are paid more than blue collar workers. They seek to create a glut of competent programmers in order to drive wages down. Apparently the American government has not been increasing the H1B allotment fast enough to pacify their thirst for skilled work at cutthroat wages.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Even artists? How about McEmployees?

At it's heart, coding is just a way to logically construct a solution to a problem in simple steps. This is a skill useful to anyone.

88 posts | registered Apr 29, 2013

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

123 Reader Comments

I've been having my daughter learn coding by programming a side-scrolling adventure in Unity 3D.

There's much she doesn't get and I have to help her with a lot of the code, but she is starting to understand some basic constructs and can do them on her own now.

The one thing she does understand is the immense amount of pride she feels when what she's working on begins to actually *work*. In fact, sometimes, she's positively "beaming" with pride when something as simple as a hand drawn sprite walks across the level and gets stopped by the far wall.

She's "beaming" because she made it happen.

I'm very proud of her.

I support this initiative - many people don't have the luxury of another person with experience to guide them over their shoulder. Let's shed more light upon it for sure.

It has been suggested the Zuck and Gates are only doing this because they don't like the fact that programmers are paid more than blue collar workers. They seek to create a glut of competent programmers in order to drive wages down. Apparently the American government has not been increasing the H1B allotment fast enough to pacify their thirst for skilled work at cutthroat wages.

It was so easy to start programming in the 1980s. Every home computer had basic built in and it was easy to draw simple shapes on the screen. Kids did it all the time even though their parents were clueless.

Now there is once again a huge wall around programming and there has to be someone around to help lift kids over the wall and show them how to get their feet wet. But there aren't that many somebodies, so most kids will never get a chance. It's a shame.

I think learning to code is great for teaching people general logic and how computers work, and it also has applications for biology and physics. I think we should focus on those broad goals and not on trying to recruit.

I think learning to code is great for teaching people general logic and how computers work, and it also has applications for biology and physics. I think we should focus on those broad goals and not on trying to recruit.

Before I learned to program I learned the basics of IO logic gates. I think that knowledge and understanding helped me tremendously in my early development as a child programmer.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Even artists? How about McEmployees?

Speaking as a programmer who works with artists all the time, it is much nicer when they have at least a basic understanding of what I do. Their feature requests/demands tend to be far more reasonable/possible when they do.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Even artists? How about McEmployees?

Why not? We're not talking about getting into memory allocation, interrupts, or producer consumer problems or something. Maybe with a bit more understanding of code and technology people might start paying attention to the permission information on their mobile apps....

If they hate it, who cares, if not then you've taught someone something.

Heck, personally this coder would love to know a bit more about art....

I don't think an hour is really enough to get into it. They should offer programming as a course at every public high school in the country. That's how I got into programming, with Grade 9-13 programming courses (I'm Canadian). Maybe make the grade 9 introductory version compulsory.

Seeing where the industry is going I suspect that 50% of jobs will be in IT sooner rather than later.

I don't think an hour is really enough to get into it. They should offer programming as a course at every public high school in the country. That's how I got into programming, with Grade 9-13 programming courses (I'm Canadian). Maybe make the grade 9 introductory version compulsory.

Well put. If the subject is that essential then it should be in the curriculum

I have mixed feelings about this initiative. Based on what I see during my every day work, I'd say that over 80% of the 'programmers' should not be programming or touching code. Just like the majority of population can never be good violin players or neural surgeons. Providing false incentives to get into software engineering filed (and I do believe that this field has enough of core body of knowledge to be called 'engineering') will only produce more mediocrity.

I'd rather Zukenberg and his ilk, would focus young minds on issues that do matter.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Problem though, is that with Apple, you have to purchase Apple hardware to use Apple's Objective C. It would be better if Microsoft led the effort; Apple will take care of itself within a decade; it seems all the members of the board are slowly cashing out all their stock options.

Marc Zuckerberg is a proponent of PHP; which is cross-platform. Apple only works with Apple hardware.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Problem though, is that with Apple, you have to purchase Apple hardware to use Apple's Objective C. It would be better if Microsoft led the effort; Apple will take care of itself within a decade; it seems all the members of the board are slowly cashing out all their stock options.

Marc Zuckerberg is a proponent of PHP; which is cross-platform. Apple only works with Apple hardware.

Just so everyone is clear, this initiative is not trying to get students to learn something like Objective C, from scratch, in one hour. It focuses on a "made up" web based drag and drop visual programming language (http://learn.code.org/) to help them get familiar with the basic high level concepts involved in programming.

They're still a long way away from worrying about matching curly braces (and that's a good thing).

It was so easy to start programming in the 1980s. Every home computer had basic built in and it was easy to draw simple shapes on the screen. Kids did it all the time even though their parents were clueless.

Actually you'll be delighted to know that's exactly a problem MS has tackled.

It was so easy to start programming in the 1980s. Every home computer had basic built in and it was easy to draw simple shapes on the screen. Kids did it all the time even though their parents were clueless.

Actually you'll be delighted to know that's exactly a problem MS has tackled.

This is fantastic! Everyone should have a basic idea of code and its concepts, if not the specifics.

Even artists? How about McEmployees?

Yes, coding teaches precision and logical thinking. These skills are often not really taught outside of STEM areas. Computers require extreme precision and carefully designed algorithms to work. Programming forces one to get in the habit of being precise and thinking carefully and logically.

I do not expect most to be very good at programming.

Plus a rudimentary knowledge of how a computer works will help when troubleshooting problems.

It was so easy to start programming in the 1980s. Every home computer had basic built in and it was easy to draw simple shapes on the screen. Kids did it all the time even though their parents were clueless.

Actually you'll be delighted to know that's exactly a problem MS has tackled.